When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is discovered that we can have no more.

You may translate books of science exactly. ... The beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.